Who would buy such dreck when you can go to Sears and pick up something no one’s used? she wondered. There were lamps of varying shapes and sizes, some wearing their shades askew, reminding her of a Frenchman’s beret that her brother Abe wore. She uttered a faint exclamation when she spotted a wooden rocking chair hidden behind a black-lacquered screen featuring two painted Chinese ladies standing demurely, their eyes lowered, the lower half of their faces covered with open fans; mustachioed warriors wielding swords held high, astride hefty horses; and flame-shooting dragons.
Now I see what he’s talking about. This is not a piece of junk, she mused. The wood just needs a little polishing. And that chip I don’t mind at all. It needs a cushion. Yes, definitely a new cushion. Saul will hate it. First he’ll say it isn’t comfortable! Then he’ll say he doesn’t care if it’s a wooden crate as long as he can put his head back without me nagging him about making a mark. Okay, he’s got other places to sit.
In one of her uncommon gestures of defiance, Dora determined to buy the rocker. She loved it and had to have it. When she saw the salesman standing beside her, looking bemused, she sensed she may have been talking out loud again and resolved to stop that bad habit.
“This is a genuine copy of a Bentwood Rocker. As you know,” he said, knowing she knew nothing at all about Bentwood Rockers, genuine or otherwise, “the Bentwood Rocker was invented by a Viennese carpenter named Thonet in the late nineteenth century. This is indeed a gem. No one would know the difference. You have very good taste, madam. Your friend would admire it.”
Dora’s mind drifted to concerns about how she was going to pay for it. The salesman brought her back to the present with his historical treatise.
“He developed a method of bending solid wood with steam. Truly remarkable. No one had ever accomplished anything like it. A creative genius in his own right, don’t you agree?”
“Uh-huh,” Dora replied without thinking or caring about how this furniture maker bent wood with steam. But she reminded herself to tell Saul, who would be interested. He would like that, she thought. She realized she hadn’t asked the price.
“. . . Art Nouveau era . . . Tiffany . . . Thonet . . . a factory in Moravia . . . very valuable, but for you,” he added, “I can let you have it for twenty-five dollars. It’s quite a bargain, believe you me. I see that you admire it”—he also saw her wince when he mentioned the price—“but I like to think that my pieces will live in a good home, so for you, twenty dollars. Did you say you live in Bergenwood? I drive by there—nice little town—on my way home to Leonia and could easily drop it off.”
Dora siphoned one dollar and fifty cents from the twenty-dollar weekly food allowance that Saul gave her so that, in a little more than thirteen months, her authentic copy of a Bentwood rocker rested proudly in the corner of her newly painted, forest green-walled living room. Addie liked it so much that she painted her living room that precise shade of green.
A razor-sharp pain in her chest and neck jolts Dora back to the present day. Numbness travels down her arm as she feels the blood thundering to her head; her breath comes haltingly. She mouths, “Just like Mama, on Shabbos,” and she slumps to the floor, dropping the picture of Roberta and Hannah. Its protective glass shatters, like her dreams—and nightmares—of yesteryear.
Roberta sits staring at her computer screen, blank now for well over two hours; she picks at a piece of ragged cuticle as if it’s the most pertinent task of the moment.
In between attempts to finish a legal brief, she has already cleaned the refrigerator, re-alphabetized her file cabinets, and weeded out clothing from her closet. She has piles of old newspapers and empty bottles at the door for recycling the next day. She is just about to attack the children’s bookshelves when, to her relief, the phone rings, interrupting her writing impasse and demanding her immediate attention.
“Hello,” Roberta says.
“Roberta, sit down. I have some news. It’s bad.”
“What? Oh, my God. What’s happened? Is it Mommy? I had an uncanny feeling.”
“Now, don’t get upset, I mean, I know you will, but Mommy is dead. I had been trying to call her all day; she’d said she wasn’t feeling well. When I couldn’t reach her, I asked the manager to look in on her. She said she wasn’t authorized to go in without a family member, so I went over. Roberta? Are you there?”
Unable to speak above a whisper, Roberta tells her sister that she is listening.
“So I drove right over and was about to go in with her, but Mrs. Beasley said she thought it might be better for me to wait outside. Mrs. B. found Mommy on the floor next to her rocker with that picture of us that Daddy took on the way to Miami lying next to her. The apartment smelled something awful. It turned out that Mommy had a dish in the oven and it was burned to a crisp.”
“Oh, Jesus, Hannah, I didn’t call her this week. Oh, God! I said I was going to call her and take her out for dinner, but I didn’t. I feel like shit! I kept putting it off. All because of this stupid brief. Shit! I feel just awful. I’ll come right over now.”
“Actually, Roberta, I don’t think you should. I wish I hadn’t seen her like this. She hit her head when she fell, and there’s blood and glass all over the carpet. I just hope I don’t always remember her this way. It’s okay not to come. Really. Bert’s on his way now, so he’ll be here with me when they come to pick the body up. At least she didn’t suffer. Just like with Bubbe. Are you there? Say something, Robbie. I’m just so sorry I had to tell you this way.”
“I just can’t believe she’s dead.”
Chapter 12
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS: A NEW GENERATION
1990
Menacing clouds hover darkly overhead, threatening to release their liquid matter upon the heads of the small group of people circling the yawning hole in the ground as they listen to the black-suited rabbi reflect upon the unknown life of the occupant of the casket: Dora Kolopsky Sussman. Hannah had enlisted her own rabbi to perform the funeral service and even writes the sermon for him.
The funeral director hands out giant-sized black silk umbrellas to protect the congregated assemblage from the light mist falling. There are only enough guests to form a minyan—if one counts the women—as the rabbi begins to intone the mourners’ Kaddish, the ancient prayer dating back to ninth-century Persia.
Yisgaddal v’yiskadash sh’mei rabbo B’ol’mo di v’ro khirusai v’yamlikh malchusai b’chayaichon ooyomai chon . . . Oseh sholom bimromov, hooyaaseh sholom o’lainoo v’al kol Yisrael; v’imroo omain.
Much has changed since the death of Dora’s parents, when only her brothers and other male members of the minyan had been granted the privilege of saying this prayer. Now, her daughters chant the Aramaic words, along with their husbands, friends, and Aunt Bessie, Dora’s sister of the heart, who can barely mouth the familiar words between her uncontrollable sobs. At nearly one hundred years of age, she arrived in a wheelchair, with the help of her caretaker, Clara, declaring that nothing could keep her from coming. The sisters stand protectively on either side of her.
Such a pathetically puny gathering to bear witness, mourn, and commemorate the life—and death—of a woman who walked the earth for some eighty-six years. Or was it eighty-eight? With no birth certificate and conflicting dates on other documents, including her departure from Mr. Steen’s middle school, the sisters will never know.
As Hannah and Roberta pack up the apartment in Los Angeles that Dora occupied since Saul’s death fourteen years ago, they uncover a deteriorating document in European-style script, handwritten in German, Russian, and French, listing her date of birth as 1902, which would make her eighty-eight. There are other papers, records, and mementos stored in a small wooden box, the remains of a long-ago gift from Saul for a birthday or Mother’s Day or perhaps to celebrate an anniversary. Hannah claims to remember the occasion as Mother’s Day.
“Daddy bought it for her and it was filled with candy, or maybe it was cookies.”
Throug
h her child’s eyes, Roberta recalls a beautiful, cobalt blue, star-shaped container sprinkled with silver dust—another gift from their father—that held an assortment of sweet-smelling fragrances and body powder nestled in the same blue-colored satin fabric, but she cannot bring to mind the container her sister now holds.
They find it tucked away in the corner of Dora’s closet. Its lid features a picture of multicolored-flowers, resembling an old English print, wood-framed in rubbed sienna and covered in glass. It contains sepia-toned studio portraits of Minnie, Bessie, and one of Dora’s favorite nephews, Stewart’s only son, Harold, handsomely attired in his World War II officer’s uniform. As a kid, Roberta had a crush on him and remembered his sweet offer to loan her his saxophone when she decided she wanted to play in the school band. That was the only chair available.
There is a picture of a very young man neither woman can identify. It looks like a relative, someone from the old country, with an uncanny resemblance to Zaide Mendel. On the back of the picture, faded with time, the name Shimshon is scribbled. Alongside, the word Samson is written clearly in a different hand, confidently. There is a mottled social security card, Saul’s death certificate, dated January 13, 1976, Roberta’s report card from Mrs. Howell’s second-grade class at Longfellow Elementary School, and a fragile letter of discharge certifying Dora’s exit from Public School 63 in Manhattan.
“Hey. Hannah, look at this. It looks like a passport, but it has everyone’s name listed. And look, Mom’s name is Disha here, not Dora. But the really bizarre thing is that her birth date is listed as 1902, and here, on her school’s discharge letter, it’s 1904. It’s in French and German—I knew my French would come in handy someday: ‘Le porteur du présent bourgeoise de Witelisk, de la commune de Tonrage, Mme. Henya Kolopsky, avec des enfants Avram, 13, Disha, 10, Leib, 7, et Marya, 5 ans en foi de quoi ce passeport, confirme’ par l’apposition du scelle, est donne’ pour voyager librement on pays étrangers.’”
“Nice, Roberta, but would you mind translating?” Hannah exclaims with impatient sarcasm.
Roberta takes a breath and clears her throat, as though preparing to address a live audience. “Okay, it says, ‘The bearer of the present citizen of Witelisk, in the district of Tonrage,’—I don’t get it; didn’t they come from Odessa? Well, anyway—‘Mrs. Henya Kolopsky, with her children Avram, 13, Disha, 10, Leib, 7, and Marya, 5 years at the time of this passport, attested to and confirmed by the affixed stamp, has permission to travel to a foreign country.’ Something like that. So you think she was trying to make herself younger than Daddy? It’s only a few years, but maybe it meant a lot back then, you know, to be younger than your husband.”
“Maybe, but it wasn’t like her to lie.” Hannah ponders. “If anything, she told the truth, her truth, when she shouldn’t have. And she wasn’t that vain either. I mean, she always liked to look nice, wear the latest style, at least when she was younger, but she didn’t have the kind of vanity to lie about her age. I think. On the other hand, she kept the incest with Uncle Abe a secret until last year, when she told you about it. Boy, I still can’t get over that one. You just never know about these things. I don’t think a kid can ever know who his parents really are. Or, for that matter, even one’s mate. Or mates—plural—if we’re talking about you.”
“Oh, that’s a good one, Hannah,” Roberta rejoins, her laughter merging with that of her sister’s but quickly turning into sobs. “I still can’t believe she’s dead. And that this is what’s left of her life. A few pieces of flimsy paper. That will be us someday, you know.”
They are left to wonder if their mother did indeed misrepresent her age to Saul’s Aunt Sadie so many years ago, when she stitched bloomers in Uncle Joe’s factory. At that time, at twenty-two, Dora had already entered the realm of spinsterhood. They thought it was more likely a lapse on the part of their grandparents, having birthed seven children, not counting the little boy who died. Or it might have been a manifestation of the way the Russian government regarded the birth of Jewish children? Ciphers. Just Yids. Why keep records of people considered on par with animals? Or below. The Russian aristocracy did love their dogs and horses, as the paintings in the great museums established, with their rat-sized dogs sitting on their mistresses’ laps.
Henya and Mendel kept track of important dates, referring to them as “the time of the big fire,” or “the terrible flood,” or “the year that the drought destroyed the crops because of the water shortage,” or “the year that Yonkel died.” Or it could have been the confusion caused by the czar’s insistence on preserving the Julian calendar.
Gregorian or Julian, what does it matter now? We know that this woman was born and then she died; we also know that she lived and was buried in a hole in the earth. Two years, or two hundred, in relation to infinite time—forever and ever in the cold, damp ground—obliterates any reason to fret over such trifles.
Dora was the last living member of the Kolopsky family in America, although there had been talk of another branch—a wealthy professional cluster consisting of lawyers and doctors living in Boston. But they were only words emanating from Dora’s lips: “My uncle Schmedia, a very wealthy man, and his sons, the doctors, David and Meyer.” No one had ever met or had any evidence of their existence. The sisters would discover, some years later, through a previously unknown relative living in Pittsburg, the chapel built by the brothers at Brandeis University to honor their parents. In the entryway to the chapel, Schmedia’s portrait hangs and bears a remarkable likeness to Dora’s brother Leon, even to the full head of white hair and light blue eyes.
Mendel, as so typically happens, followed Henya to the grave within a year of her death. After she died, he no longer instructed the recalcitrant nonobservant passersby in the ways of Jewish law. Nor did he talk very much when his children visited. His day consisted in reading his siddur and occasionally crossing the street to go to shul. With his eyes dimmed by cataracts, he didn’t see the car that hit him.
Faye died of a brain aneurysm as surgeons attempted to eradicate the clot that caused her paralyzing stroke. Joe remarried six months later, much to the consternation of his two children. Abe died of a sudden heart attack as he sat watching television, and Stewart of lung cancer, the price for a lifetime of smoking. Lenny, the doctor, died of a stroke in his sleep.
Dora outlived her adored younger brother, Lenny Kolopsky, MD—adored except for a brief rupture in their relationship when he remarried several months after his wife, Bella’s, death.
“She wasn’t even cold in her grave,” she spat out with bitterness. “What? You couldn’t wait to schtup? She’s so beautiful, this new one, with her mieskeit punnum? Or maybe because she’s rich and lives on Park Avenue?”
Dora didn’t understand why her brother reacted with such ire, reverting to a language he had put aside so many years ago, “Ikh hob dir in drerd,” as he slammed the receiver into its cradle when she tried to call him at Hannah’s insistence. Dora thought he should call her and apologize for telling her to go to hell, although apologies for the Kolopsky family did not come trippingly off the tongue.
“I was telling the truth,” she insisted when her daughters reproached her for bad manners. “Everyone else makes nice to him because he’s a doctor. What, he couldn’t wait for a year? How must his children feel? It’s their mother, after all. He fawned all over Bella when she was alive and then forgets her, poof, like that,” she said, snapping her fingers, “like she never lived. Who knew he was such a delicate flower that he couldn’t hear the truth.”
Dora felt vindicated when, two years later, Lenny’s bride booted him out of her lavish Manhattan condominium on Fifty-Seventh and Park Avenue—along with his new life of dinners at the Russian Tea Room nearby—following a series of minor strokes he suffered. She was afraid that he would exhaust her considerable financial resources. Dora didn’t hesitate to remind Lenny of his haste to marry as he recuperated at his son’s home. He died within two months of his wife’s abandonment.
Marya—well, no one knows why, how, or exactly when Marya died. Stewart found her in her bed, worried when, after several days, she didn’t show up for work at the laundry. Lenny found a tattered bankbook stashed away with her underwear, reflecting a balance of twenty thousand dollars, which would more than cover the cost of her funeral. There was a broken record on the floor, lying alongside her bed, her father’s recording of “Eli, Eli.” She left the remains of a lifetime of frugality, fortitude, devotion and audacity.
The adopted member of the family, Aunt Bessie, as Roberta and Hannah call her, remains very much alive and vital. Max, her husband, left her a widow after being hit by a taxicab just prior to the lavish sixtieth birthday celebration she had planned for him. Stunned and grief-stricken, she continued to teach. When, at sixty-five, she did eventually retire on an assistant principal’s pension from one of the better Manhattan public schools, she immediately volunteered to tutor English and American history to the flood of new Russian immigrants, those fleeing yet another round of anti-Semitism overseen by Premier Khrushchev in 1956. Her reputation was of a demanding but caring and generous teacher with high standards and expectations, especially for the young women in her class, to whom she preached and, at times, loaned money and provided home-cooked meals of stuffed cabbage or meatloaf or beet borscht swirled with sour cream curlicues.
“I got a call from Aunt Bessie yesterday with the strangest request,” Roberta recounts to Hannah in her daily phone call. “She wants Mommy’s rocking chair. First of all, though, do you or your kids want it? I certainly don’t.”
“Why in the world would she want that?” Hannah inquires. “It doesn’t go with the modern furniture in her apartment. And the pillow is falling apart.”
“I asked the very same question, and she said she wanted something to remember Mommy by, and, with some emotion I might add, she said that the rocker was the only thing Mommy ever stood up to Daddy about. She said she remembered when Mommy bought it and how excited she was and how she saved her food money to pay for it. But when she finally got it home, Daddy spoiled it all because he didn’t like it. She said that, for her, it signified what Mommy might have become if she hadn’t settled in life.”
Odessa, Odessa Page 15
